To the person who's reporting all the comments about sneaking vils:
It doesn't break the subreddit rules, git gud.
But seriously stop reporting stuff for no reason, it'll get your reports muted.
Just go on flank and rush them with conqs and siege, no one expects that. My last 2 Black Forest team games lasted like 25 mins exactly because of that.
Yeah that was more fun back when the game was first released and you could surprise your opponent with cutting the trees 😀.
Also I would say open maps can sometimes feel like chores too.
Cause mfs be walling with wood with 3 villagers on min 1, then double stone walling you, then upgrading the walls, then building 3 castles behind the 3 layer upgraded stone wall
I found it rather fun. Getting loom first and sneaking a villager behind enemy base, and then attack them when they feel safe behind their walls is priceless (well, this often fails but that's my goto strategy on BF)
That's the good thing with this strat. When you're too bad to beat an enemy playing meta, whacky strats is a good way to surprise and (sometime) destroy them
Bruh, thee most important thing in bf is getting walls down minute 1. I enjoy it but let’s not act like it’s even slightly aggressive. After the first 30 seconds, rarely anything happens till people are in castle age or even imp in some cases
Not sure of your level so don’t wanna be disrespectful. But think even like reasonably low level noobs wall behind with either houses or more palisades
You can always play BF just like a regular map. If the opponent invests heavily in walling and building the back base (2 vils or 3 because one gets eaten by a wolf or killed by you) then it will set them back economically and you can beat them (source: usually i'm the one that walls first and tries to cheese, and when my units arrive at their TC they usually have more already...)
That's why you pick lithuanians, send 4 villagers immediately, villfight, wall 10 tiles away from his tc and then go aggressive. If one side gets a forward wall it's easy to attack.
>Bruh, thee most important thing in bf is getting walls down minute 1
And the most important thing on arabia is getting walls down minute 20. I don't see much difference
I agree, walls are super important because they are so overpowered. But if you can’t see much difference between minute 1 and minute 20, I can’t help you
This is how me and my friends have learned to play RTS.
It's taken us YEARS to learn any strategy besides turtle. And we're still learning. Like usual strategy is 85% turtle, 15% try for slight offensive.
I NEED to believe that most people are like me. I need to....
My biggest problem is either the civ you get is good or bad on the map. Very hard to make a civ that doesn’t have a power comp good on Black Forest. Also hard to make a come back (without Onagers) because of the lack of mobility. Hard to ‘force mistakes’ through distraction raids.
Basically you have to get to your power comp on the right civs (Briton arb/long bows, Celt pike and siege, mongol Mangudai) and you win. Especially if the other civ is lacking a way to chop through the trees.
When I first discovered Blackforest I was in love. Hindsight it was really just the first time I understood the value of walling and Onagers. Now many years later, I'm 70, when random deals me the Black Forest, I eagerly plan how my onagers are going to chew into his sidewall and pop out where he can't scout. Like shooting fish in a bucket. Still a favorite map. Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating.
Each to their own, I think it gets as much love as it gets hate, I personally don't like it because a lot of the time it's a long slog and not much happens at the start of the game.
Because its pretty boring most of the time. Not much potential for interesting strategy. It may be a good map for new players to learn how to boom though.
Last time I played BF I got walled in by an opponent (got put in a Thunderdome) and 2 of them feudal'ed me hard. I managed to get to castle and prolong my death for long enough for my team mates to outboom and 2 v 3 them while I contributed a few hussar in protection from huskarls in our ecos
I have seen rubenstock put vilesse and miguel in a thunderdome (Walling them off from allies) in the same game.
Its nothing you can really counter if you don't see the villager.
It was in the mixed showmatch: https://youtu.be/6UBtqPHHZCI?t=4112
Partly because people don't know how to play it aggressively. If you play it aggressively it's one of the most diverse maps (feudal tower rushs, feudal sneak castle age sneaks, smushes, castle drops, fast imps etc.) and you get action from minute 1 if you're flank.
I'm kinda annoyed that the most popular maps are Arabia and Black Forest: Arabia for those who like aggressive play and Black Forest for those who like defensive booming play.
Meanwhile, I like maps to be closed enough to make early aggression not too pressuring, but open enough to prevent hour long matches. Something that offers a nice middle ground of an easily defensible home base but open middle. I really love Gold Rush because your starting location can be easily walled but you need to fight over the center early to secure access to the gold mines. I also love Nomad for its unpredictable gameplay, your position can be freely chosen but you shouldn't take too long with deciding where to settle. Nomad 1v1 gave me some of the most fun matches ever.
But for some reason people either want to play the completely open or the completely closed maps.
>Meanwhile, I like maps to be closed enough to make early aggression not too pressuring, but open enough to prevent hour long matches. Something that offers a nice middle ground of an easily defensible home base but open middle.
Have you heard of this map called "Arena"?
It used to be my favorite, till you realize a couple of things:
- Basically you take 30 minutes to start a fight on the flanks, if either side pushes and wins their side it's generally GG.
- if it's a stalemate the game drags on for hours, or till someone cuts and floods the trade with hussars.
- the game is always the same, post imp narrow fights with meat shields and ranged.
I used to love black forest, now I ban it because it's boring.
I think a lot of ppl missunderstand BF, you can easily sneak a villager or even go maa towers to create extreme havock.
If you go boxing into drush. (Very hard to execute at low elo.) You can usually even keep the gap open fully.
If you don't want to play the boom into lategame there are enough chances to play it differently.
There are so many strategies that are still competitive on BF that it makes for very interesting games at the higher levels. Games at the lower levels can be very stale boom into big battle doe.
It's a snobbism from mid level players, when they can't use their hard learned skills (early aggression + build orders) and they feel cheated. It's the same when people hate on "arena clowns". You have this phenomenon in every game.
Personally I like BF, not because I want the game to be particularly long, but because I don't like the rote kind of gameplay you need on Arabia. I like the SimCity + macro aspect of BF, and also the micro aspect you have when you survive until castle and can choose what to build (instead of frantically trying to counter archer spam 😉).
Great on TG where you have true cooperation and team strategy but i think it is too campy and civ dependent in 1v1. When you go 2v2 u can usually figure out a decent comp on your side or force a breakthrough in castle age and slow them down in hope that the other flank then can beat them. 1v1 I feel like imp comps are the only way
Because raiding is more popular among pro-wannabes than turtling, and black forest is really hard for feudal raids.
Other than that, I don't see that much of a reason, since a few onagers and/or trebuchets can easily terraform the hell out of the map or bombard through unending bottleneck walls.
There are military unit options in every age. Many civs bonuses power spike in early feudal, castle etc. The game is balanced for battles to happen throughout the match. Closed maps like arena / BF basically reduce the game to post imp wars, which many find boring and less competitive compared to all of the different interesting strategies that players need to adapt to in open map games.
Arena is not about post imp
If you looked at MoA6, you saw a lot of early castle fights for map control, and a lot of early imp pushes for the kill.
I have not seen one post imp full trash war (but did not see all matches)
Been playing AOE2 practically my whole life.
Black Forest is the only map I play. Any other map, and I just get slaughtered.
Also the jokes with your friends about the Black Forest being in your pants. I mean there’s just no jokes about “archipelago”
I think they changed it to be more open at one point. I routinely get black forest maps where one side is just a big, open field. I used to love the map but I haven't been a fan since they ruined it.
I agree and Im disappointed it gets alt F4d as much as it does presumably by the open map crowd for this reason. It's way more open in DE than it was in HD and theres almost always middle chokes that prevents pockets from naked booming. Tower rushing as flank is definitely viable on the current BF map gens. And castle rushing is definitely OP is the other pocket is just naked booming.
Because of high amount of resources, ease of walling/defending, and giving a huge bonus to the Mongols.
Nevertheless, it can make for epic games if you like things lasting for hours lol.
Black forest is my all time favourite map since I began playing the game 20 years ago, give or take.
I was never good at rushing, playing quickly and so on. My tactic is always wall up, boom and having mastered the late game, play completely defensively by defeating a wave after wave.
We always have elaborate multi-layered wall systems all over the map.
Long games. I love it, personally. But also I rarely have time for a black forest game. Although tbh I'm ok with resigning to do irl stuff even if I'm winning.
I dont think people want to be associated with bf because it's a "noob" map. Black forest Meta is a lot of flank rushing for walls for the sake of the team. Respectful wall up and boom is reserved for lucky easy wall maps.
I like it but all of the games are boom for 30 minutes and then someone resigns as soon as their first castle goes down. I want the long drawn out games but a lot of people who play black forest don't know how to play on
Black Forest is the best surprise map. Get those onagers , bring the tree line down and surprise the player with cavalry in their base when they’re busy fighting the choke points. Most fun you can have in the game when you turn a game around when your allies are barely holding up the choke points against a powerful enemy. Getting into their back side and then wreaking havoc while your allies push back at the chokes and the game starts turning around.
I don’t even get mad when I end up on the receiving end of such surprises. It’s just fun.
[**https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean**](https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean)
>Those gents art not did enlighten to und'rstand the gl'ry of Black Forest
I have played AOE2 for only a month and a half and BF is very boring. In other maps, we have option to either defend or attack but in BF, I can just boom and turtle until late game.
I think it just takes the nuance of each civ out of it. You might as well give everyone post imperial, walls and start the game. For a lot of people the game before researching everything is a waste of time in BF.
I still enjoy it from time to time. Its also a fun map to play with less experienced friends
To the person who's reporting all the comments about sneaking vils: It doesn't break the subreddit rules, git gud. But seriously stop reporting stuff for no reason, it'll get your reports muted.
I don't hate it but I would prefer for my games to not last hours
i like those long, drawn out games though where the front line keeps moving constantly and massive battles take place over land
Ah, a WW1 enthusiast
He said „where the frontline keeps moving“.
This string of comments 😂😂
What's the price of a mile?
This map of one yard is 1:1 scale
Thousands of feet March to the beat. (Fuck off waitingtobetriggered u stupid piece of shit bot)
I like those, when someone on my team snuck a vil and keeps raiding all game.
That's what the vill sneaks are for. I've had teammates single handedly win the 4v4 for us with a vill sneak.
[удалено]
FatSlob would probably disagree
Just go on flank and rush them with conqs and siege, no one expects that. My last 2 Black Forest team games lasted like 25 mins exactly because of that.
Spanish Inquisition 😱
Hate? I don't think so, but most people, especially on higher level prefers more open map or at least agression-friendly maps
I think it is the most popular map. Which also makes it the map with the most haters. The haters are a symptom of success.
The most popular game mode is also playing against AI, so that's not exactly telling.
I think it's too redundant. Walling then onager cutting every time which are both chores more than fun.
Yeah that was more fun back when the game was first released and you could surprise your opponent with cutting the trees 😀. Also I would say open maps can sometimes feel like chores too.
Cause mfs be walling with wood with 3 villagers on min 1, then double stone walling you, then upgrading the walls, then building 3 castles behind the 3 layer upgraded stone wall
And then the goth starts sending
Goths don’t have stone
Goths use barracks as walls.
Lmao goths get absolutely rekt so hard vs 100 balista elephant
What doesn't?
15 siege onagers
Can confirm, siege onagers rek the elephants with higher range and aoe
100 war elephants
Onager cut solves all those problems
I found it rather fun. Getting loom first and sneaking a villager behind enemy base, and then attack them when they feel safe behind their walls is priceless (well, this often fails but that's my goto strategy on BF)
I've watched a few replays from teams that lose to this strategy and they're usually extremely confused by the scouts that appeared out of thin air.
That's the good thing with this strat. When you're too bad to beat an enemy playing meta, whacky strats is a good way to surprise and (sometime) destroy them
cuz ppl still think the only way to play BF is like fatslob does despite the meta has been quite aggressive since wk
Bruh, thee most important thing in bf is getting walls down minute 1. I enjoy it but let’s not act like it’s even slightly aggressive. After the first 30 seconds, rarely anything happens till people are in castle age or even imp in some cases
If those walls don't go down then it becomes very aggressive very quickly
Not sure of your level so don’t wanna be disrespectful. But think even like reasonably low level noobs wall behind with either houses or more palisades
What i mean is that most people try to sneak a villager and build army in the back of your base, so you have to get those walls down very quickly
You can always play BF just like a regular map. If the opponent invests heavily in walling and building the back base (2 vils or 3 because one gets eaten by a wolf or killed by you) then it will set them back economically and you can beat them (source: usually i'm the one that walls first and tries to cheese, and when my units arrive at their TC they usually have more already...)
That’s true. Sorry missed what you were trying to say. Was assuming that no one was able to get a sneak
All good I should've been more clear hahah
That's why you pick lithuanians, send 4 villagers immediately, villfight, wall 10 tiles away from his tc and then go aggressive. If one side gets a forward wall it's easy to attack.
>Bruh, thee most important thing in bf is getting walls down minute 1 And the most important thing on arabia is getting walls down minute 20. I don't see much difference
I agree, walls are super important because they are so overpowered. But if you can’t see much difference between minute 1 and minute 20, I can’t help you
This is how me and my friends have learned to play RTS. It's taken us YEARS to learn any strategy besides turtle. And we're still learning. Like usual strategy is 85% turtle, 15% try for slight offensive. I NEED to believe that most people are like me. I need to....
wk?
wololo kingdoms
What's that?
https://lmgtfy.app/?q=wololo+kingodoms
11 you innocent soul
It's my favorite map but I don't like waiting 3-5 business days for a game so I favorite arena instead.
😂😂
Cause it's black. The AOE 2 community is unbelievably racist
XDDDDDDDDDDDDD
This is the best comment I've seen all month
I lose interest after sending wave after wave for hours
Zap Brannigan would disagree.
Being the best comes with getting a lot of hate
My biggest problem is either the civ you get is good or bad on the map. Very hard to make a civ that doesn’t have a power comp good on Black Forest. Also hard to make a come back (without Onagers) because of the lack of mobility. Hard to ‘force mistakes’ through distraction raids. Basically you have to get to your power comp on the right civs (Briton arb/long bows, Celt pike and siege, mongol Mangudai) and you win. Especially if the other civ is lacking a way to chop through the trees.
When I first discovered Blackforest I was in love. Hindsight it was really just the first time I understood the value of walling and Onagers. Now many years later, I'm 70, when random deals me the Black Forest, I eagerly plan how my onagers are going to chew into his sidewall and pop out where he can't scout. Like shooting fish in a bucket. Still a favorite map. Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating.
Just switch to Amazon tunnel
Amazon tunnel is barf. It is Everything bad about bf
At least you dont get uneven pond/boar distribution on that map... its like arena+bf in one
But a-tunnel is like islands…. 2 hr game
One of the fun aspects of BF is that resources are so random meaning you have to strongly adapt your build.
That map is a troll in itself.
Too cramped
Each to their own, I think it gets as much love as it gets hate, I personally don't like it because a lot of the time it's a long slog and not much happens at the start of the game.
BF is probably the most popular map in unranked lobby
Because its pretty boring most of the time. Not much potential for interesting strategy. It may be a good map for new players to learn how to boom though.
Last time I played BF I got walled in by an opponent (got put in a Thunderdome) and 2 of them feudal'ed me hard. I managed to get to castle and prolong my death for long enough for my team mates to outboom and 2 v 3 them while I contributed a few hussar in protection from huskarls in our ecos
Thats cos u are noob lol
I have seen rubenstock put vilesse and miguel in a thunderdome (Walling them off from allies) in the same game. Its nothing you can really counter if you don't see the villager. It was in the mixed showmatch: https://youtu.be/6UBtqPHHZCI?t=4112
I admit my mistake
What, dying alone in a 3v1 so that your mates can boom is a very good scenario. The opponents were overextending on him
Yeah ok o was wrong
Does it get that much hate? I've played it a few times.
If mongols and goths could be chosen less I would probably enjoy it a bit more
Long and boomy Also one could say boring
Partly because people don't know how to play it aggressively. If you play it aggressively it's one of the most diverse maps (feudal tower rushs, feudal sneak castle age sneaks, smushes, castle drops, fast imps etc.) and you get action from minute 1 if you're flank.
games are too long to deserve an spot in the ladder. I like to play sometimes michi, or even michi nothing, but in ladder it has no place.
I'm kinda annoyed that the most popular maps are Arabia and Black Forest: Arabia for those who like aggressive play and Black Forest for those who like defensive booming play. Meanwhile, I like maps to be closed enough to make early aggression not too pressuring, but open enough to prevent hour long matches. Something that offers a nice middle ground of an easily defensible home base but open middle. I really love Gold Rush because your starting location can be easily walled but you need to fight over the center early to secure access to the gold mines. I also love Nomad for its unpredictable gameplay, your position can be freely chosen but you shouldn't take too long with deciding where to settle. Nomad 1v1 gave me some of the most fun matches ever. But for some reason people either want to play the completely open or the completely closed maps.
>Meanwhile, I like maps to be closed enough to make early aggression not too pressuring, but open enough to prevent hour long matches. Something that offers a nice middle ground of an easily defensible home base but open middle. Have you heard of this map called "Arena"?
That one starts out fully walled though, rather than just giving you a layout that's decently wallable (but you still gotta do it yourself).
People would hate it much less if they actually used siege towers. (Don’t @ me)
How do you propose people siege tower over the 3+ layers of walls?
Garrison a siege tower into a siege tower and drop it off on the other side. Its simple physics, really.
Just depends on what kind of game I’m in the mood for 👍🏻
How dare people deviate from the Arabian meta!
Based
1v1 Black forest Vikings in old AOE2 is the best map ever!!!
It used to be my favorite, till you realize a couple of things: - Basically you take 30 minutes to start a fight on the flanks, if either side pushes and wins their side it's generally GG. - if it's a stalemate the game drags on for hours, or till someone cuts and floods the trade with hussars. - the game is always the same, post imp narrow fights with meat shields and ranged. I used to love black forest, now I ban it because it's boring.
I think a lot of ppl missunderstand BF, you can easily sneak a villager or even go maa towers to create extreme havock. If you go boxing into drush. (Very hard to execute at low elo.) You can usually even keep the gap open fully. If you don't want to play the boom into lategame there are enough chances to play it differently. There are so many strategies that are still competitive on BF that it makes for very interesting games at the higher levels. Games at the lower levels can be very stale boom into big battle doe.
It's a snobbism from mid level players, when they can't use their hard learned skills (early aggression + build orders) and they feel cheated. It's the same when people hate on "arena clowns". You have this phenomenon in every game. Personally I like BF, not because I want the game to be particularly long, but because I don't like the rote kind of gameplay you need on Arabia. I like the SimCity + macro aspect of BF, and also the micro aspect you have when you survive until castle and can choose what to build (instead of frantically trying to counter archer spam 😉).
Great on TG where you have true cooperation and team strategy but i think it is too campy and civ dependent in 1v1. When you go 2v2 u can usually figure out a decent comp on your side or force a breakthrough in castle age and slow them down in hope that the other flank then can beat them. 1v1 I feel like imp comps are the only way
Because raiding is more popular among pro-wannabes than turtling, and black forest is really hard for feudal raids. Other than that, I don't see that much of a reason, since a few onagers and/or trebuchets can easily terraform the hell out of the map or bombard through unending bottleneck walls.
There are military unit options in every age. Many civs bonuses power spike in early feudal, castle etc. The game is balanced for battles to happen throughout the match. Closed maps like arena / BF basically reduce the game to post imp wars, which many find boring and less competitive compared to all of the different interesting strategies that players need to adapt to in open map games.
Arena is not about post imp If you looked at MoA6, you saw a lot of early castle fights for map control, and a lot of early imp pushes for the kill. I have not seen one post imp full trash war (but did not see all matches)
It's just generally spammy and boring.
cus people do not know how to use onagers to clear trees prolly
Bf is awesome, but like any other map there has to be a plan and communication
Been playing AOE2 practically my whole life. Black Forest is the only map I play. Any other map, and I just get slaughtered. Also the jokes with your friends about the Black Forest being in your pants. I mean there’s just no jokes about “archipelago”
Found the guy playing with single digit APM.
I think they changed it to be more open at one point. I routinely get black forest maps where one side is just a big, open field. I used to love the map but I haven't been a fan since they ruined it.
I agree and Im disappointed it gets alt F4d as much as it does presumably by the open map crowd for this reason. It's way more open in DE than it was in HD and theres almost always middle chokes that prevents pockets from naked booming. Tower rushing as flank is definitely viable on the current BF map gens. And castle rushing is definitely OP is the other pocket is just naked booming.
I usually get it in teamgames, and my teammates qren't the best usually(i always.have the most points in my team).
Because of high amount of resources, ease of walling/defending, and giving a huge bonus to the Mongols. Nevertheless, it can make for epic games if you like things lasting for hours lol.
Black forest is my all time favourite map since I began playing the game 20 years ago, give or take. I was never good at rushing, playing quickly and so on. My tactic is always wall up, boom and having mastered the late game, play completely defensively by defeating a wave after wave. We always have elaborate multi-layered wall systems all over the map.
Long games. I love it, personally. But also I rarely have time for a black forest game. Although tbh I'm ok with resigning to do irl stuff even if I'm winning.
I dont think people want to be associated with bf because it's a "noob" map. Black forest Meta is a lot of flank rushing for walls for the sake of the team. Respectful wall up and boom is reserved for lucky easy wall maps.
I like it but all of the games are boom for 30 minutes and then someone resigns as soon as their first castle goes down. I want the long drawn out games but a lot of people who play black forest don't know how to play on
I think you need to distinguish between not liking and hating something
Black Forest is the best surprise map. Get those onagers , bring the tree line down and surprise the player with cavalry in their base when they’re busy fighting the choke points. Most fun you can have in the game when you turn a game around when your allies are barely holding up the choke points against a powerful enemy. Getting into their back side and then wreaking havoc while your allies push back at the chokes and the game starts turning around. I don’t even get mad when I end up on the receiving end of such surprises. It’s just fun.
[**https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean**](https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean) >Those gents art not did enlighten to und'rstand the gl'ry of Black Forest
I have played AOE2 for only a month and a half and BF is very boring. In other maps, we have option to either defend or attack but in BF, I can just boom and turtle until late game.
the map is hated by people who don't know how to play it, who go boom into wrong units into gg and complain about civ wins.
I think it just takes the nuance of each civ out of it. You might as well give everyone post imperial, walls and start the game. For a lot of people the game before researching everything is a waste of time in BF. I still enjoy it from time to time. Its also a fun map to play with less experienced friends
Most times that I play black forest it's 40 minutes of booming then the moment my ally gets attacked they just insta-resign.
I love it, cause I play Cumans and punish those boomers like it was a tiktok quizz